‘I was compelled to drive the blade into the canvas’: The artist Edita Schubert brandished her medical instrument like creatives handle a paintbrush.

Edita Schubert lived a double life. Over a period spanning thirty years, the late Croatian artist was employed by the Department of Anatomy at the Zagreb University’s faculty of medicine, precisely illustrating human anatomical specimens for medical reference books. Within her artistic workspace, she produced art that eluded all labels – regularly utilizing the exact implements.

“She created these highly accurate, technical drawings which were used in medical textbooks,” explains a organizer of a fresh exhibition of the artist's oeuvre. “She was deeply immersed in that work … She was totally unfazed about being in dissections.” These detailed anatomical studies, notes a arts scholar, are continually used in textbooks for anatomy students currently in Croatia.

Where Two Realms Converged

Having two professional lives was not uncommon for creatives in the former Yugoslavia, who often lacked a viable art market. However, the manner in which these spheres merged was unique. The medical knives for anatomical dissection were transformed into tools for cutting fabric. The medical tape meant for wound dressing secured her sliced creations. The test tubes typically reserved for laboratory samples transformed into containers for her life story.

An Artistic Restlessness

During the beginning of the 1970s, Schubert was initially operating within conventional painting boundaries. She crafted precise, ultra-realistic arrangements in paints and mediums of candies and condiment containers. However, discontent had been growing since her academy years. During her time at the Zagreb art school, she was required to depict nude figures. “I was compelled to stab the knife through the fabric, it simply got on my nerves, that stretched surface I was forced to communicate upon,” she confided in a researcher, among the rare individuals she spoke with. “I used the knife to pierce the canvas, not a paintbrush.”

The Artistic Performance of Cutting

By 1977, this impulse manifested physically. Schubert produced eleven large canvases. All were rendered in a uniform blue hue then using an anatomical scalpel and executing numerous intentional, accurate incisions. She then folded back the sliced fabric to show the backside, producing pieces recorded with clinical accuracy. Marking each with a date highlighted their status as performances. Through a set of photos created in 1977, entitled Self-Portrait Behind a Perforated Canvas, she inserted her features, hair, and digits through the openings, turning her own body into artistic material.

“Absolutely, my work possesses a dissective quality … anatomical analysis similar to figure drawing,” the artist replied when asked about their meaning. For a close friend and scholar, this explanation was a key insight – a hint from a creator who seldom offered commentary.

A Dual Existence, Inextricably Linked

Analysts frequently presented her twin professions as wholly divided: the pioneering creator in one sphere, the technical draftsman funding her life in the other. “My perspective is that her dual selves were intimately linked,” explains a confidant. “You can’t work for 35 years in the Institute of Anatomy daily for hours on end and not be influenced by what you see there.”

Biological Inspirations Beneath the Surface

A key insight from a ongoing display is the way it follows these anatomical influences within creations that superficially look completely abstract. During the middle of the 1980s, she made a collection of angular works – trapezoidal forms, as they were later termed. Contemporary critics categorized them under the trendy neo-geo label. However, the reality was uncovered much later, while examining her personal papers.

“The question was posed: how are these forms made?” remembers a scholar. “And she told me, it’s very simple, it’s a human face.” Those characteristic colours – known among associates as her personal red and blue – were the exact shades used for drawing neck vasculature in anatomy books in a manual for surgical anatomy utilized in medical faculties across Europe. “It became clear those hues emerged concurrently,” the account notes. The geometric abstractions were, in fact, highly stylised human bodies – painted while she worked on anatomical illustrations by day.

Shifting to Natural Materials

Towards the end of the seventies and start of the eighties, the artist's work shifted direction again. She started making assemblages from twigs secured with hide. She composed displays of skeletal fragments, flower parts, herbs and soot. When asked why she’d shifted to such organic materials, she expressed that the art world had become “barren theoretically”. She felt compelled to transgress – to work with actual decaying material as a response to art that had metaphorically withered.

A 1979 piece entitled 100 Roses, featured her denuding a century of flowers. She intertwined the stalks into circular forms positioning the floral remnants in the center. Upon being viewed while organizing a show, the work maintained its impact – the organic matter now fully desiccated but miraculously intact. “The scent of roses persists,” a commentator notes. “The pigmentation survives.”

An Elusive Creative Force

“I prefer to stay cryptic, to hide my intentions,” she revealed in terminal-year interviews. Secrecy was her strategy. She would sometimes exhibit fake works stashing authentic works out of sight. She eliminated select sketches, keeping merely autographed copies. Even with showings at prestigious exhibitions and receiving acclaim as an innovator, she gave almost no interviews and her output stayed mostly obscure internationally. A current museum exhibition is her first major solo show outside her homeland.

Responding to the Horrors of Conflict

Then came the 1990s, and the Yugoslav Wars. Hostilities impacted the capital directly. The artist answered with a group of mixed-media works. She pasted newspaper photographs and text directly on to board. She reproduced and magnified them. Then she obscured the surface with paint – black bars resembling barcodes. {Geometric forms obscured the images beneath|Angular shapes hid the pictures below|